Jeep’s new ad campaign for its Grand Wagoneer super-luxury SUV, which debuts tonight, has the feel of one of the epic efforts of the last decade or so launched by a company that has risen from bankruptcy with a Stellar branding and image before worthy products could finally justify what Jeep, Ram and Dodge have become in the minds of American consumers.
“Eyes Wide Open” is the campaign that Stellantis, new owner of the brand relaunched by Fiat Chrysler, is launching during the television broadcast of the first game of the 2022 World Series. Not by chance, to promote its first vehicle which breaks the price of 100 $000 as standard, Stellantis signed up one of baseball’s top players, ex-Yankee superstar Derek Jeter, and his wife, Hannah Jeter.
“We needed a personality that symbolizes American success and aspiration,” Stellantis global marketing director Olivier Francois told reporters. “Secondly, we wanted someone related to our client, which is always essential – someone they would know and be relevant to them, perhaps someone with a family, wife and children, the kind of person who could authentically embody our new three-row SUVs.
“And the most important thing is that it’s a Jeep, which is genuine, and we’re obsessed with that. [criterion]“, continues François. “So we wanted someone who wasn’t necessarily a rock star or a Hollywood star, not necessarily someone who was over-marketed or a professional endorser. And it’s more complicated than you think. It took weeks, if not months, to find the perfect choice. »
The timing of the campaign is no accident either, even though it wasn’t what Stellantis originally envisioned. The Grand Wagoneer was eagerly awaited by high-society families and sold well, but since launching production last year the revived nameplate has been constrained by supply like so many other vehicles . Stellantis marketed it only a little because of this.
And while Jeter’s New York Yankees haven’t made the series this year despite high expectations and the American League’s second regular season wins, Jeep can now stage a big Grand Wagoneer raise on one of the best live tv platforms available.
The Grand Wagoneer campaign will run across North America on television, social media and digital media channels and will include future print extensions. In addition to the 60-second launch spot, the campaign will feature 30-second and 15-second video content featuring the Jeters, airing across multiple media platforms.
It is no coincidence, however, that the main vehicle for the new advertisements will be television, a medium which François has exploited to stunning effect with special advertisements for the American brands of Stellantis, starting with the two-minute advertisement. “Born of Fire” for the Chrysler brand, featuring Eminem, during the Super Bowl in 2011.
“We tend to be getting smarter and more focused and selective” with advertising media, Francois said, “but this, to me, is really an ‘old media’ campaign” for television. “We can adapt the bespoke creative for social media, but it’s, directionally, the old medium.”
Indeed, the style and look of the Grand Wagoneer spots featuring the Jeters are very reminiscent of the kind of big-moment TV campaigns that Fiat-Chrysler did regularly for years under Francois, but haven’t aired since. that Stellantis acquired it.
Matching the price and significance of the vehicle itself and what Grand Wagoneer is supposed to say about how the Jeep brand “arrived” at such a level of opulence and rarefied price, the “Eyes Wide Open” has a feeling of grandeur. himself. The cinematography, red carpet scenes, regular family scenes, Jeter’s good guy persona himself, model Hannah Jeter’s glamor quotient, and glimpses of the vehicle’s grandeur that are sure to be eye-openers for millions of American consumers – it has all become a formula where effort meets moment.
The campaign seems a perfect allegory for the effort of the Jeep brand itself, from its highly utilitarian and rugged past to a formidable brand that now spans much of the US automotive market and a brand that can now cover all segments from $25,000 to $120,000.
Jeter is a Kalamazoo, Michigan product whose childhood dream was to become the shortstop for the New York Yankees. But it was only through effort and authenticity and a quintessentially American story – the one associated with the Jeep brand – that Jeter attained sporting legend status, 14 All-Star teams, the Baseball Hall of Fame and the subject of the recent seven-part ESPN documentary, The captain.
So even the voiceover for the main anthem ad, which launched on Friday night, harkens back to some of the best tent pegs in Francois’ portfolio over the past 11 years, which includes now-classic uses of Bob Dylan, Clint Eastwood, Bill Murray, a posthumous Paul Harvey and others, and the groundbreaking participation of Eminem that literally helped revitalize Fiat Chrysler a decade ago. (There’s even a self-referential Detroit element to the script, which has almost nothing to do with Jeter – but everything to do with Fiat-Chrysler.)
“Have you ever wondered why they call it the American Dream…And not the American Purpose?” says the ad. “Or the American plan? Maybe it’s because in dreams you can do anything. You can be reborn in the Motor City… And rise in the city that never sleeps. You can turn back time over and over again. In dreams you can hold your whole world in the palm of your hand. And you can do it all with your eyes wide open.
Perhaps the best thing about this ad is that we can expect to see it on TV multiple times over the next two weeks of the World Series. Fiat-Chrysler’s iconic Super Bowl ads have only had their shining moments once.
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